Killing fields

THERE HAS BEEN another round of violence in the Sri Lankan capital, Colombo. Another human bomb exploded, taking a toll of over a dozen lives, and unidentified gunmen shot dead a Tamil leader, Kumar Ponnambalam, in a Tamil-dominated suburb the same morning. The Sri Lankan police have no doubts that the woman suicide bomber was from the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) and her target could have been the Deputy Minister for Defence, Gen. Ratwatte. He was supposed to pass through that road. It is quite possible that over the years there has been an improvement in the quality of security and a deterioration in the quality of the LTTE recruits. What is tragic is that there is just no value for human life. Except for registering its continued presence in Colombo, the LTTE gains little by these explosions, which kill innocent civilians too. There have been various theories on who killed Kumar Ponnambalam. He was known to be a voice for the LTTE in Colombo. Like the assassinations of Vijaya Kumaratunga and Lalith Athulathmudali, this too could remain an unsolved `political murder'.

The continuing violence compounds the crisis in the island and the President, Ms. Chandrika Kumaratunga, is back to square one. She may have lost her vision in the right eye in the December 18 blast and shocked the nation with her recent interview and then her speech on television with a closed eyelid. Unfortunately, her swearing-in speech and the address to the nation have not exactly inspired any confidence. After preaching against hatred, she has gone on to lambast the opposition, the LTTE and even a section within the military establishment. This does not make it any easier to work towards a negotiated settlement to the ethnic crisis. The President must make up her mind on the kind of approach she needs to take. Does she want to call a parliamentary election soon to secure a more comfortable majority? Is she going to encourage defections to engineer a two-thirds majority in the present House? Or will she set up a Constituent Assembly to take up a full-fledged reframing of the Constitution? Ms. Kumaratunga has admitted that two `facilitators' have tried to bring the LTTE back to the negotiating table, in vain. There may be another attempt soon.

Before she finalises her approach and plan, the best course would be take the opposition into confidence. It must be clear that there can be no solution to the Tamil question without a broad bipartisan consensus between the two major Sinhala parties. Instead of making a public appeal for the opposition to ``join hands'' with her and then going hammer and tongs at it, she might as well invite it for talks to hammer out a consensus. Without taking that step, she cannot get to the LTTE or the nation with a package. Unless the two Sinhala parties agree to put the country first and find common ground in search of a solution, Sri Lanka will continue to bleed and the LTTE will persist with its game of playing one party against the other and eliminating one national leader after another. Now that the President feels she has a `divine mandate' to solve the ethnic problem and then retire from active politics, she must take some meaningful steps to work towards that solution. Enough lives have been lost on both sides of the ethnic divide and the people, despite all the provocations, have preferred peace to war and violence. If Ms. Kumaratunga is serious about going down in history as the leader who solved the problem, she needs to do more than criticise the opposition and blame past leaders. At least in the new millennium, one fervently wishes there is peace in the troubled island.

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